Holland House and Glenarvon
Abstract:
The talk will consider a literary coterie based around a place: Holland House, Kensington. Nowadays Holland Park is an oasis amidst urban sprawl, but in the early nineteenth century the house which stood in its grounds was peripheral to the political and cultural centres of Westminster and the City. The paper will discuss who came to the house, what they did, and why its hostess Lady Holland managed to get the greatest poets, writers, and politicians of the day to talk around her dinner table. I will end by thinking about Lady Caroline Lamb’s novel Glenarvon (1816) and its caustic portrait of the House, written by one of its former habitué who felt herself scorned.
About the Speaker:
Will Bowers is a Senior Lecturer in eighteenth-century literature and Thought at Queen Mary University London. His first book, The Italian Idea, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020 and won a first book prize from European Society for the Study of English. He has published numerous articles on Romantic poetry and culture, and was an editor on the final volumes of the Longman Poems of Shelley (2024). He is currently preparing an edition of William Cowper’s Poems, Hymns and Letters for Oxford World’s Classics.
Suggested reading:
Website about the house and its sociability: https://dined.qmul.ac.uk/
Link about the House’s dinner books: https://www.euromanticism.org/an-opening-in-a-holland-house-dinner-book/
Glenarvon by Caroline Lamb: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/iknu3eo7hkfni0ljerbss/Glenarvon-Chapter.pdf?rlkey=lkf10f6tug03ye5ue4dum4tlp&st=hzfm2iu4&dl=0
‘The Many Rooms of Holland House’ by Will Bowers: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/a351lltumwhnel3bt97w1/The-Many-Rooms-of-Holland-House.pdf?rlkey=bhsgqagqs6lfxb3qf63k73nov&st=rsef5ztl&dl=0
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This page was last updated on 2 May 2025
